Palm, Inc. used this year's Consumer Electronics Show to unveil its iPhone challenger, the Palm Pre, which will run a brand-new operating system called Palm webOS.

With Palm's sales lagging against competition from the Apple iPhone and RIM's BlackBerry, the announcement comes at a critical time for the company.Â* Reaction so far has been positive, withÂ*PC Magazine calling the Pre and its slide-out keyboard "CES 2009's Hottest Product",Â*USA TodayÂ*taking note of "lots of good buzz", andÂ*GizmodoÂ*calling it "simply amazing", to name a few.

"Palm products have always been about simplifying lives and delivering great user experiences," said Palm president and chief executive Ed Colligan.Â* "webOS and Pre bring game-changing simplicity to an increasingly mobile world by dissolving the barriers that surround your information.Â* It's technology that seems like it's thinking ahead to bring you what you care about most - your people, your time, and your information - in the easiest and most seamless way."

The Pre will be available only from Sprint in the "first half of 2009", according to a press release.Â* It will be the first device to run the new mobile operating system.

webOS

According to Palm, webOS is a completely new mobile platform with web technologies CSS, XHTML, and JavaScript under the hood.Â* As a result, it offers a "rich open development environment that's familiar to tens of millions of web developers."

The operating system introduces Palm Synergy, which will collect information from several places into one view.Â* It will have linked contacts, with a smart recognition system that can pull from Outlook, Google, and Facebook accounts, recognizing the same contact across all three to present a single listing instead of three copies of each person.Â* Updating a contact on a webOS device will also update it across your various accounts.

Palm Synergy supports layered calendars and combined messaging.Â* Calendars can be layered in a single view, combining work, family, friends, sports teams, or other interests.Â* You can toggle individual calendars if you like.Â* Combined messaging will take advantage of linked contacts to consolidate all conversations with the same person into a chat-like view, even if it started in IM and you want to reply with a text message.

In a subtle jab at the iPhone, Palm's webOS can run multiple apps at the same time, each one "seamlessly connected to the web and always active."Â* According to Palm, you can instantly flip from one app to another like you would sift through playing cards on a table.

Palm claims an "instinctive" user interface on a multi-touch surface that will make it easy to "flip through a deck of cards and rearrange items simply by dragging them; when you are done with something, just throw it away."Â* The webOS platform has universal search that will narrow down what you're looking for as you type and deliver results from your device and the web.

Notifications and updates are delivered in an unobtrusive way "that's a radical departure from other mobile platforms".Â* Text messages and emails are announced with a scrolling bar at the bottom of the screen that will let you read it right away or later.

Pre

Palm claims the Pre to be the "most integrated and user-friendly phone for mobile users."Â* A large touchscreen is supplemented with a physical keyboard that slides out from the bottom only when needed for email and text messaging, and Palm says the phone has been designed to feel natural in hand and small in pocket.Â* Unlike the iPhone, it has an additional gesture area beneath the screen for navigation so you don't have to touch the screen or obstruct the content being displayed.

"As our lives revolve more and more around the web, devices like Palm Pre that transform how we interact with the web will lead the way," said Sprint chief executive Dan Hesse.Â* "We are focused on bringing our customers a superior experience that includes easy-to-use devices, simple pricing and value with Simply Everything all-inclusive offerings, plus Ready Now, our exclusive retail program that helps customers leave the store feeling comfortable and confident they know how to use their new device."

It will have support for Sprint TV (live and on-demand programming), Sprint Navigation (GPS-enabled audio and visual turn-by-turn directions with one-click traffic rerouting and more than 10 million local listings), and Sprint Radio, with more than 150 channels. Â*

Palm is anticipating a full set of accessories for the phone, including what it calls the first inductive charging solution.Â* If the Pre is set down on top of the Palm Touchstone charging dock, you don't need to connect it.Â* It will charge and remain active for access to the touch screen, watching movies or video, and using the speakerphone.

Several former Apple employees are playing major roles in the evolution of Palm. Â*Jon Rubinstein, who opened the announcement, is Palm'sÂ*executive chairman of the board. Â*Rubinstein was once a key engineer in the creation of the iPod and development of the iMac. Â*He also worked at NeXT. Â*Rubinstein's departure brought others over from Apple in his department, and some common ties exist between the two companies in Palm's PR department. Â*Palm Director of Software Chris McKillop worked on the iPod and iPhone teams as well.

It comes to the United States first from Sprint in the first half of 2009 with a world-ready UTMS version for other regions to follow.Â* Pricing has not been determined, although we do have some indication that Palm won't look to aggressively undercut the iPhone's pricing. Â*

"He looked at me like I'd peed on his rug.Â* 'Why would we do that when we have a significantly better product,' he asked, then walked away."

Analyst Reaction

Wall Street investment firm Needham's Charlie Wolf saw the webOS as a return to Palm's "software roots" and also praised the Pre, writing, "Give credit where credit is due.Â* With its new operating system and smartphone, Palm lives to fight another day."

LOL. I'd hardly call the iPhone doomed, but it's nice to have a decent competitor. Windows Mobile phones offer a lot of flexibility, but I know a lot of people who want something that's simple...but not as restrictive as the iPhone. We've even started a community over at SprintPre.net to chat about it.

LOL. I'd hardly call the iPhone doomed, but it's nice to have a decent competitor. Windows Mobile phones offer a lot of flexibility, but I know a lot of people who want something that's simple...but not as restrictive as the iPhone. We've even started a community over at SprintPre.net to chat about it.

You know I don't want to give too much credit to Rubinstein but it's hard not to see the influences he may have had.

ex Apple employees don't always find success but the one thing i've seen recently is that many leave imbued with a sense of "it has to look good AND perform" ethos that is not just Apple but still rare in a "good enough" world.

I don't want Palm to fold. I'd rather see Palm survive and Windows Mobile hit the reef. Microsoft owns enough of the computing landscape.

He's a mod so he has a few extra vBulletin privileges. That doesn't mean he should stop posting or should start acting like Digital Jesus.- SolipsismX

What Apple should have done is really built up the platform by encouraging development and creating an strong ecosystem around the iPhone with thousands of applications and hardware accessories. They should have expanded sales globally, added key enterprise technologies and built iPhone technology into the flagship iPod, therefore exposing the platform to a few million more users.

Thanks to all these misteps and miscalculations, Apple have left the door right open for Palm to sweep in and steal the iPhone's thunder. The fact Palm are launching their device in such prosperous economic times, when people can easily switch providers and cancel lengthy contracts makes things all the more scary for Apple. They are as you so rightly say: doomed.

Seriously, the pre looks a very good handset with very good software. But Apple beat them to market by a shade under 24 months. iPhone has brand recognition like very few models on the market.

Stop thinking cellphone vs cellphone, start thinking platform vs platform.
Palm has what looks a great cell phone, but they also have an untried, untested platform.
Apple has a good cell phone, a good platform, good marketing and $25 billion US.

I do wonder about the whole javascript/html/css bit. Working at a higher-level like that while developing ostensibly 'native' apps seems... unnecessarily limiting.

Also, the pitch had a heavy 'business' vibe. It seems they're positioning it more like a blackberry alternative than a consumer-focused device. I'm definitely interested in seeing the rest of the specs and seeing actual devices perform though. Looks like a neat bit of tech.

You know I don't want to give too much credit to Rubinstein but it's hard not to see the influences he may have had.

ex Apple employees don't always find success but the one thing i've seen recently is that many leave imbued with a sense of "it has to look good AND perform" ethos that is not just Apple but still rare in a "good enough" world.

I don't want Palm to fold. I'd rather see Palm survive and Windows Mobile hit the reef. Microsoft owns enough of the computing landscape.

Palm, WHERE IS THE NEW VERSION OF Palm Desktop for Mac? It has not been updated for a decade, being limited and buggy!!!

I'm a former Palm user from as far back as the PalmPilot 1000, and continuing until the T|X. As a Mac user, I'll never buy another one until they update their support for the Mac. Maybe the presence of former Apple employees in the organization will jumpstart that support, but until then I'm very happy with my iPhone (and still have 18 mos on the contract!)

So is the webOS really a new name for the BeOS or is this a new OS built off of a Linux distribution?

Wow, good question.

It is possibly the BeOS windowing system on top of Linux.

I watched the Pre video tour. Some observations:

1. You have to slide the keyboard out to type anything. I found this is very annoying with Android. Apple's software keyboard actually changes depending on the context. For example, if a text field is numeric only, the keyboard only contains number keys. With hardware keyboard, typing some of the stuff (numbers, symbols) is very difficult.

2. Again about the keyboard - you have to turn to the correct orientation to type. On Android, you have to turn to landscape. With Pre, you have to turn to portrait.

3. Again about the keyboard. When people have to slide every time they want to type, that's extensive wear on the sliding mechanism. I have doubts on its reliability. iPhone has terrific reliability record and one of the reason is the lack of keyboard.

4. Speed. From the video tour, the responsiveness is just not there. It looks cool when doing the animations, but not cool when you try to do anything for real. The demonstrator tried six times to show the gesture area.

5. So the apps will essentially be web apps. Yawn.

6. Palm is squeeze to Sprint - which is neither GSM nor CDMA, and is way smaller than ATT and Verizon. Basically, it is getting the leftover from Apple, Blackberry and Android.

7. The phone is simply UGLY.

8. Attention to details. On iPhone, when you pinch, the zoom level actually stick to your fingers. On "Pre", it zooms but the zoom level seems to be fixed. Basically, it knows that you are pinching, but doesn't know how much.

9. To do multiple apps running properly, it needs to have more RAM. On iPhone, the application usually has only 24MB of RAM to work with (that's only 3x photos). Running multiple apps would require much more RAM (more expensive, and bigger device) or swapping onto the flash.

10. A lot of apps are not finished. Photo doesn't rotate according to accelerometer, for example. During the demo, the demonstrator keeps on say "There will be a menu ..... blah blah" for missing features. A lot of things didn't work. She would press a button, expecting something to work, but then have to switch to something else.

11. Palm and Sprint won't say anything about the pricing and schedule. That means two things - it is going to be expensive, and it is not ready.

So, I think it is at least one year from reality, and will cost much higher than what people expect. It is quite possibly BeOS windows server over Linux, and it may end up like BeOS - very cool but couldn't find a market.

What Apple should have done is really built up the platform by encouraging development and creating an strong ecosystem around the iPhone with thousands of applications and hardware accessories. They should have expanded sales globally, added key enterprise technologies and built iPhone technology into the flagship iPod, therefore exposing the platform to a few million more users.

Thanks to all these misteps and miscalculations, Apple have left the door right open for Palm to sweep in and steal the iPhone's thunder. The fact Palm are launching their device in such prosperous economic times, when people can easily switch providers and cancel lengthy contracts makes things all the more scary for Apple. They are as you so rightly say: doomed.

Seriously, the pre looks a very good handset with very good software. But Apple beat them to market by a shade under 24 months. iPhone has brand recognition like very few models on the market.

Stop thinking cellphone vs cellphone, start thinking platform vs platform.
Palm has what looks a great cell phone, but they also have an untried, untested platform.
Apple has a good cell phone, a good platform, good marketing and $25 billion US.

Palm tying it's phone to Sprint is even a bigger mistake than Apple tying itself to at&t. Palm is attacking from a weakened market and consumer perception position.

Well the OS kicks the iPhones ass out of the water. The hardware looks dated, too thick, too small and physical slide out keyboard just adds bulk. It doesn't look sleek or different from all the other clones out there.

Palm's Pre will join Android, RIM's Storm and an upcoming WinMobile 7 as the group of 2009 catch-up smart phones OS' that will finally make a genuine effort to match the iPhone in terms of convenience and usability, not just specs and features. (looks like Nokia/Symbian will have to wait until 2010.) it only took them all two years ...

and none of them yet has an 'ecosystem' of integrated supporting on-phone apps and computer software like iTunes/Mobile Me/iLife (for Mac users only). Android will have Google's "cloud," but that is not a complete package yet. WinMobile 7 will have some whole new Windows Live ecosystem someday, but not this year (just the Zune store). RIM and Palm would have to partner with somebody else to even try ... so it will be 2010 before any of them could hope to catch up with Apple for this.

but of course Apple is not standing still in the meantime. we'll see this summer (at WWDC?) if Apple can continue to jump a year or more ahead of the pack with, presumably, a third generation iPhone 3.0. wait and see ...

"He looked at me like I'd peed on his rug. 'Why would we do that when we have a significantly better product,' he asked, then walked away."

This is why the Palm Pre won't sell. This guy never gets it!! This is how he responding to questions from New York Times in 2006 to the idea that any company (including Apple) could easily win customers in the smart-phone sector:

Quote:

"We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone," he said. "PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.'"

1. You have to slide the keyboard out to type anything. I found this is very annoying with Android. Apple's software keyboard actually changes depending on the context. For example, if a text field is numeric only, the keyboard only contains number keys. With hardware keyboard, typing some of the stuff (numbers, symbols) is very difficult.

2. Again about the keyboard - you have to turn to the correct orientation to type. On Android, you have to turn to landscape. With Pre, you have to turn to portrait.

3. Again about the keyboard. When people have to slide every time they want to type, that's extensive wear on the sliding mechanism. I have doubts on its reliability. iPhone has terrific reliability record and one of the reason is the lack of keyboard.

4. Speed. From the video tour, the responsiveness is just not there. It looks cool when doing the animations, but not cool when you try to do anything for real. The demonstrator tried six times to show the gesture area.

5. So the apps will essentially be web apps. Yawn.

6. Palm is squeeze to Sprint - which is neither GSM nor CDMA, and is way smaller than ATT and Verizon. Basically, it is getting the leftover from Apple, Blackberry and Android.

7. The phone is simply UGLY.

8. Attention to details. On iPhone, when you pinch, the zoom level actually stick to your fingers. On "Pre", it zooms but the zoom level seems to be fixed. Basically, it knows that you are pinching, but doesn't know how much.

9. To do multiple apps running properly, it needs to have more RAM. On iPhone, the application usually has only 24MB of RAM to work with (that's only 3x photos). Running multiple apps would require much more RAM (more expensive, and bigger device) or swapping onto the flash.

10. A lot of apps are not finished. Photo doesn't rotate according to accelerometer, for example. During the demo, the demonstrator keeps on say "There will be a menu ..... blah blah" for missing features. A lot of things didn't work. She would press a button, expecting something to work, but then have to switch to something else.

11. Palm and Sprint won't say anything about the pricing and schedule. That means two things - it is going to be expensive, and it is not ready.[QUOTE]

Very good observations. From what I can see, I would rate it #2 in the ranking of flagship phones (iPhone #1, G1 #3, and Storm #91501493). I would certainly go for it if I were stuck on Sprint, even though I don't like physical keyboards (how hilarious to think about entering text while viewing a webpage in landscape. flip, enter, flip, rotate, enter, flip, rotate, enter, flip).

There are a bunch of things the Pre seems to have that I hope Apple is paying attention to. The OS actually does seem to be more advanced than iPhone's crippled Mac OS X. It might be time to make the iPhone a bit more Mac OS X-ish.

Not bad at all. I would still buy the iPhone over the Pre. I think people who want a keyboard would like this one.

Too bad it is only coming to Sprint. I have had terrible luck with them.

A

Not sure how much luck had to do with it. I had Sprint for years then a string of horrendous customer service issues with them forced me to switch to T-mo. Been OK with them for a number of years. I still won't touch at&t even if they paid me.

Palm, WHERE IS THE NEW VERSION OF Palm Desktop for Mac? It has not been updated for a decade, being limited and buggy!!!

My solution was to use Missing Sync. I don't remember Palm Desktop doing much to connect to any OS's native software, it was its own island. Missing Sync syncs events to calendar, contacts to Address Book, and so on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by slapppy

Well the OS kicks the iPhones ass out of the water. The hardware looks dated, too thick, too small and physical slide out keyboard just adds bulk. It doesn't look sleek or different from all the other clones out there.

It looks distinctive enough, there's not a lot of wiggle room to make it distinctive and not ridiculous. I don't remember seeing any with a curved slider. Most of the sliders are straight guides and seem to ignore that people don't have flat faces.

I love how they list that as a feature!! It is like they have the only phone that uses it and everyone wants removable battery. However, the only smartphone that does not have a removable battery is currently the second best selling smartphone (in the US at least). How weird!!

Thataboy
I watched the Pre video tour. Some observations:
1. You have to slide the keyboard out to type anything. I found this is very annoying with Android. Apple's software keyboard actually changes depending on the context. For example, if a text field is numeric only, the keyboard only contains number keys. With hardware keyboard, typing some of the stuff (numbers, symbols) is very difficult.

2. Again about the keyboard - you have to turn to the correct orientation to type. On Android, you have to turn to landscape. With Pre, you have to turn to portrait.

3. Again about the keyboard. When people have to slide every time they want to type, that's extensive wear on the sliding mechanism. I have doubts on its reliability. iPhone has terrific reliability record and one of the reason is the lack of keyboard.

You obviously have never used a slider. The are smaller phones, not annoying and very easy to use and do not break- there is no hinge. Portrait is better than landscape because it is narrower and easier to hold. This phone looks like a winner- better than a Blackberry.

There are a bunch of things the Pre seems to have that I hope Apple is paying attention to. The OS actually does seem to be more advanced than iPhone's crippled Mac OS X. It might be time to make the iPhone a bit more Mac OS X-ish.

How exactly is the iPhone's OS crippled? The underlying OS on the iPhone is in fact OS X, same that's on the desktop. Once you jailbreak the iPhone, there's not much that can't be done with it.

If you're referring to the user interface, I'd hardly call the iPhone's "crippled". The iPhone's interface is a completely different way to interact with the system. All attempts made by previous mobile operating systems just took the desktop's point&click interaction and threw it behind a touch screen. Apple designed a completely new interface for a handheld device, because they knew trying to cram the Mac screen on a display that small is absurd and counter-intuitive.

The iPhone is a new platform, it's not trying to be a micro Mac, nor should it.

And while I like the idea that they chose WebKit as their front end for the entire OS, I don't understand how some people think this is more advanced than Cocoa Touch on the iPhone? WebKit has proven to be a powerful application environment, but it is in no way superior to an OS native API.

Disclaimer: The things I say are merely my own personal opinion and may or may not be based on facts. At certain points in any discussion, sarcasm may ensue.

I heard that Palm was making jabs at the iPhone during their demo
but when I found out they were unikeyboard only I couldn't believe it.

The feature where you drag a floating bar to switch apps looks cool until
you realize how freakin' annoying this would be day in and day out.

The screen is smaller because they have to account for the extra inch and a half
when the keyboard is open.

Web app only means weaker games if any and we're on the precipice of Apple moving
to OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenCL ...come on game over (excuse the pun)

UI didn't look all that fluid and this is running on ARM Cortex (TI OMAP) the iPhone
OS would FLY on that hardware.

Congrats Palm ..welcome back but don't get cocky. You're not competing with iPhone Rev 2 you're going head to head with iPhone Rev 3 which is likely going to have a much faster ARM and PowerVR graphics and Firmware 3.0.

They better have some more tricks up their sleeve.

I figure we're going to get most of what we need in the next iPhone Rev

I figure the technology they worked on for 17" Macbook Pro may extend to the phone (correct me if i'm way off base here) and who knows maybe we see a 3.5" to 4" AMOLED screen hit. I'd pay extra for that.

He's a mod so he has a few extra vBulletin privileges. That doesn't mean he should stop posting or should start acting like Digital Jesus.- SolipsismX

I love how they list that as a feature!! It is like they have the only phone that uses it and everyone wants removable battery. However, the only smartphone that does not have a removable battery is currently the second best selling smartphone (in the US at least). How weird!!

I was being sarcastic. It is a feature - one that the iPhone unfortunately lacks and should have had from day one. It would be selling even more if it had it.
Besides smartphones- do any cell phones not have it? Besides throw-aways?

I was being sarcastic. It is a feature - one that the iPhone unfortunately lacks and should have had from day one. It would be selling even more if it had it.
Besides smartphones- do any cell phones not have it? Besides throw-aways?

I really doubt that many are not buying the iPhone due to lack of removable battery. Most people are know are not buying the iPhone due to the required data plan, the 2 year contract, or/and being stuck with another carriers contract. No one ever mentioned the battery or the touch screen keyboard as a problem.

I don't know about regular phones not having removable batteries but I used to have a WM smartphone called Qtek years back and it did not have a removable battery. That phone was a disaster since the battery drained quickly and died in few months.

As an unabashed iPhone fanboy, I have to say, this phone looks great. Not great enough for me to give up my beloved iPhone and switch carriers, but certainly a worthy competitor. Provided it costs something reasonable and actually performs well, this seems certain to give palm a seat at the table.

Personally, I think it's fantastic that another company seems to understand that hardware is nice, but software is where it's at. The smart phone industry would have been much poorer without Palm.

I wouldn't buy it over an iPhone, but I think it's a fairly stylin' handset. The fact that both the device and the OS appear well-designed and attractive is the main reason for the buzz IMO.

The thing that's going to determine if this device is a winner or not is the very thing they are seemingly keeping secret for now. By this I mean the actual details of the OS, what it really is, how it works, how you develop for it etc.

All they have shown us so far is a tech demo really, kind of like what used to be called an alpha product. The OS is obviously not completely finished, and the apps are non-existent, as is the eco-system. The reaction so far from the press is "looks good," but that's pretty much because the "look" of it is all we have seen so far. I'd give it a week or two for the details of the OS to come out before anyone can make a realistic determination of it's chances of market success.

A big problem I see for this device is that the iPhone will still very likely eat up the majority of the market with it's platform, so this device is basically an alternative to that and always will be. Looked at that way, the market for this thing is crowded. I don't think it likely that there will be more than two major smartphone platforms moving forward so it's a matter of who will gain the slot of "if not iPhone then ..."

I think the smart money is still on Android for the moment and this device would certainly run it well even if the whole "WebOS" thing fails. I wouldn't be surprised if there are Android developers trying to mimic this UI as we speak and if the UI and functionality is the same, but it's open source Linux, etc. I don't see why anyone wouldn't chose Android instead of moving to an entirely new custom OS.

In fact, the more I think about it, perhaps the whole "we must develop our own OS" thing might be Palm's achilles heel in a way. They never have played well with other OS's. Their original raison d'être was to create a whole new platform that would be a leader in the mobile market, same as WinMobile, and they never seem to have grown beyond that hope IMO. Even now when two new mobile platforms with fantastic adoption rates (iPhone & Android) are staring them right in the face, they come out with their own custom one that they hope will take over the market?

The premises underlying this strategy seem questionable to me.

In Windows, a window can be a document, it can be an application, or it can be a window that contains other documents or applications. Theres just no consistency. Its just a big grab bag of monkey...

I was being sarcastic. It is a feature - one that the iPhone unfortunately lacks and should have had from day one. It would be selling even more if it had it.
Besides smartphones- do any cell phones not have it? Besides throw-aways?

The only way the iPhone sells more is when the phone is offered, as is, on Verizon. That won't happen because Verizon and T-Mobile USA are dictatorial mental midgets.

This is why the Palm Pre won't sell. This guy never gets it!! This is how he responding to questions from New York Times in 2006 to the idea that any company (including Apple) could easily win customers in the smart-phone sector: